DNF4-NEEDS-RESTARTING(8)

NAME
dnf4-needs-restarting - DNF needs_restarting Plugin

Check for running processes that should be restarted.

SYNOPSIS

dnf needs-restarting [-u] [-r] [-s]

DESCRIPTION

needs-restarting looks through running processes and tries to detect those that use files from packages that have been updated after the given process started. Such processes are reported by this tool.

Note that in most cases a process should survive update of its binary and libraries it is using without requiring to be restarted for proper operation. There are however specific cases when this does not apply. Separately, processes often need to be restarted to reflect security updates.

NOTE: Needs-restarting will try to guess the boot time using three different methods:

UnitsLoadStartTimestamp
    D-Bus property on /org/freedesktop/systemd1. Works unless the system was not booted with systemd, such as in (most) containers.

st_mtime of /proc/1
    Reflects the time the first process was run after booting. This works for all known cases except machines without a RTC—they awake at the start of the epoch.

/proc/uptime
    Seconds field of /proc/uptime subtracted from the current time. Works for machines without RTC if the current time is reasonably correct. Does not work on containers which share their kernel with the host—there, the host kernel uptime is returned.

    WARNING: Some systems are configured to read the RTC time in the local time zone. This mode cannot be fully supported. It will create various problems with time zone changes and daylight saving time adjustments. The RTC time is never updated, it relies on external facilities to maintain it. If at all possible, use RTC in UTC by calling timedatectl set-local-rtc 0. See man timedatectl for more information.

OPTIONS

All general DNF options are accepted, see Options in dnf(8) for details.

-u, --useronly
    Only consider processes belonging to the running user.

-r, --reboothint
    Only report whether a reboot is required (exit code 1) or not (exit code 0).

-s, --services
    Only list the affected systemd services.

--exclude-services
    Don't list stale processes that correspond to a systemd service.

CONFIGURATION

/etc/dnf/plugins/needs-restarting.d/

/etc/dnf/plugins/needs-restarting.d/pkgname.conf

Packages can be added to needs-restarting via conf files in config directory. Config files need to have .conf extension or will be ignored.

More than one package is allowed in each file (one package per line) although it is advised to use one file for each package.

Example:

echo "dwm" > /etc/dnf/plugins/needs-restarting.d/dwm.conf

AUTHOR
See AUTHORS in your Core DNF Plugins distribution

COPYRIGHT
2025, Red Hat, Licensed under GPLv2+